Page 64 of You Lied First

M argot hears the scrunch of tyres on gravel and points her eyes to the window to alert Sara to Guy’s return. She hopes he burned off some of his negative energy in the gym. The autopsy results hadn’t left him a happy man.

‘So, how’s work?’ Margot asks Sara, but she’s not capable of listening to whatever it is Sara says in reply. The main thing is that, by the time Guy’s head pops around the door, both women are speaking of innocent things.

‘Margot? Oh, and Sara! I thought that was your car,’ he says. ‘Quite the little coven. What’s going on?’

Margot looks at Sara but Sara’s eyes slide away.

‘Oh, I see. Chatting about which of us did it, are we?’ Guy says. ‘May I join in? My money’s on, let’s see … eeny, meeny, miney …’

‘Guy, please,’ Margot says.

Guy rubs his hands together theatrically. ‘Maybe we should discuss it over a coffee. Will you join us, Sara?’

‘I was just going, actually,’ she says. ‘But thanks!’ Sara’s across the room like a rat up a palm tree. ‘Bye now!’ she flings over her shoulder, and Margot hears her feet clatter down the stairs and the front door slam.

Guy looks bemusedly after her. ‘So, who do you think’s the guilty party?’

Margot remains silent.

‘Have you considered it might have been her?’

‘She barely knew Celine. And she liked her.’

‘So that leaves us.’ He folds his arms and stares at Margot. ‘You and me.’

‘I suppose it does.’

‘ Just the two of us ,’ Guy sings. ‘Romance never dies.’

Margot feels his eyes on her as she shuffles some papers on her desk.

‘I know you think I did it,’ she says. ‘But I didn’t.’

‘And I know you think I did, but I didn’t. So who’s lying?’

There’s a tense silence, then Guy breaks it.

‘Well, I suppose you ought to get on with that mansion on the off-chance that we’re not in jail before the delivery date.’

After he’s left the room, Margot lets her head drop backwards, drained by the morning’s conversations.

She’d imagined that Sara would encourage her to ask Guy straight out if he’d done it and she’d hyped herself up to ask him with Sara there as a safeguard should Guy turn violent.

She’d pictured the two of them banding together against him, but Sara’s response that they should let things lie floored her.

Sara said that she doesn’t think Margot did it, but the fact that she wouldn’t agree to asking Guy if he did it indicates that she must have doubts; she must be wondering about Margot.

Are the three of them going to be stuck forever in this dance of ‘who did it?’

Margot massages the taut ropes of muscle that run up each side of her neck and presses the tender spot where they join her skull behind her ears.

She can’t do this. Her brain isn’t designed for sleuthing.

Maybe she should just listen to Sara. Sara’s a counsellor who spends her life telling people how to act, and Sara has said that she doesn’t think Margot should prod this viper’s nest any further.

And maybe she won’t. But knowledge is power, and what she suspects after today is that she’s married to a man who’s not just a liar and a bully but also man who more than likely murdered his lover.